What Custom Development Means for Investment Managers

Mature technology and lower costs have a few immediate effects for the financial industry. First, asset management firms get a higher ROI for their development dollar than ever before. The ratio of development time to value-added business analysis becomes much more favorable. The CTOs and CIOs responsible for development strategies are taking advantage of this to deliver higher output and quality to the user base they support.

Second, we expect to see increased integration of technological innovations that can have a real impact on technology project startup costs. One clear example is cloud computing. Once a cloud-based architecture is in place, the implementation time for new applications becomes shorter than ever thanks to infrastructure that is immediately available, easily deployable and scalable.

Also, applications hosted "in the cloud" are available at once to users in multiple locations-without the overhead related to global server installations. This provides instantaneous potential for globalization; companies can now scale horizontally and vertically in record time. It remains to be seen how capital market firms will ultimately use this development but the prospective benefits are numerous.

Rick Treese is Chief Technology Officer at The Markets.com. Rick is a specialist in Web product strategy, software development, and driving online businesses growth. He has over 18 years of technology leadership experience focused in the finance, Internet and media industries. Prior to TheMarkets.com, Rick was chief technology officer of global media company Advanstar Communications. Before that, he was vice president of technology at Goldman Sachs. Rick is co-author of CTO Leadership Strategies, published by Aspatore Books. He is a frequent speaker at industry events. He holds a Bachelor's degree in Banking and Finance from Hofstra University. He can be reached at rtreese@themarkets.com.